30 September 2019; AFP: The 33-year-old leader of Austria's centre-right People's Party Sebastian Kurz faces the start of a tough search for possible coalition partners Monday, despite resounding success in parliamentary elections.
His OeVP party won a clear victory with around 37 percent in Sunday's vote, a marked improvement on its performance in 2017. The result means Kurz will have the responsibility of sounding out other parties -- which may be an uphill task.
"We will of course talk to all parties.... to see with which parties we could have a stable government," Kurz told the national public radio on Monday, adding this could stretch for more than the two months it took him last time to form a pact with the far-right.
But that government collapsed in May after his junior coalition partner, the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), was engulfed in the so-called "Ibiza-gate" corruption scandal which led to the resignation of its leader Heinz-Christian Strache.
In the week before the vote, the FPOe was hit by further allegations of expenses abuse by Strache and suffered a worse than expected loss, down almost 10 percent from 2017 to around 16 percent, according to projected results.
The OeVP-FPOe alliance -- hailed as a model by nationalists across Europe, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban -- now seems unlikely to be repeated as FPOe leaders say they would prefer to lick their wounds in opposition.
Dejected current FPOe leader Norbert Hofer says steps towards the "reconstruction" of the party will be announced in the coming days, while the influential Strache, who led the party for 14 years, could be expelled if the expenses allegations turn out to be true.
- Riding the Green wave -
Kurz -- who become the world's youngest elected leader at 31 in 2017 -- may instead turn to Sunday's other big winners, the Green party.
Helped by the climate crisis shooting up the list of voters' concerns over the summer, the Greens were able to notch up their best-ever result of around 14 percent -- a dramatic reversal from 2017 when they failed to enter parliament.
The Greens and the OeVP already sit together in government in the provinces of Tyrol and Salzburg. However, cooperation on a national level may be more tricky.
Greens leader Werner Kogler said on Sunday the party would need to reflect on whether a coalition "makes any sense whatsoever".
"Radical change" would be necessary from the OeVP, Kogler said, pointing not only to action on climate change, but also fighting corruption and poverty.
Polling by the SORA institute shows that both parties' voters are sceptical of each other, with only 20 percent of OeVP voters wanting to the see the Greens in government and 32 percent of Green voters wanting the OeVP in government.
But Die Presse daily wrote in a front-page editorial on Monday that the Greens had this one chance to prevent another far-right-leaning government.
The two winners now have an "opportunity to dare to have an internationally highly regarded environmentally friendly and business-oriented political orientation," the newspaper said.
- Going it alone? -
Kurz could also consider the most traditional form of governance in Austria, a "grand coalition" between the OeVP and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPOe).
But this is hampered by the SPOe share of the vote falling five points to around 22 percent, its worst post-war result in a parliamentary election.
As a result, SPOe leaders say the party must be reformed to better communicate its message.
Also, it was Kurz who pulled the plug on the last grand coalition in 2017.
According to political scientist Peter Filzmaier, "Kurz has to disappoint some of his voters, no matter who he goes into coalition with".
For example, a partnership with either the SPOe or the Greens would be hard to explain to the some 258,000 voters who are estimated to have switched to Kurz from the far-right.
A final option for Kurz would be a minority government.
"That has become very, very tempting" for him, analyst Johannes Huber said.
But even this scenario would need support from another party for the OeVP to survive key votes in parliament, failing which the country could be asked to go to polls again in a few months.
